Brown Wimpenny: Long Live Brown Wimpenny review | Jude Rogers' folk album of the month
(Broadside Hacks) Named after a 19th-century relative, this sprawling group foreground folk’s rough edges, but are best in the emotional, less showy moments Brown Wimpenny
(Broadside Hacks) Named after a 19th-century relative, this sprawling group foreground folk’s rough edges, but are best in the emotional, less showy moments Brown Wimpenny arrive with a name suggesting the softness of a twee indie band, before you discover it belonged to a fourth great-uncle of banjo player Seth Lockwood, who emigrated from a West Yorkshire farm to the 19th-century US.
Then you hear the exploratory, hour-long debut album of this sprawling young collective, formed in Sunday sessions in Lockwood’s Manchester living room. A band happy to show their music’s muddy roots, these expansive eight tracks nonetheless pulse with ambition.
The album begins with a high-reaching medley, building from an atmospheric fiddle-led instrumental over a low cello drone. Dusty live production makes a feature of the music’s cracks and creaks, but when Lockwood’s athletic banjo takes the lead, it carries the rest of the group with arresting dynamism.
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